


Mistaken for Strangers

by Cyphomandra



Category: Oxford Time Travel universe - Willis
Genre: Comedy, Established Relationship, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/pseuds/Cyphomandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A photograph taken over a hundred years earlier sends Verity on another trip back through time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistaken for Strangers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rho/gifts).



> Many thanks for china shop for not only providing me with great on-deadline beta, but also marking the text up in html for me when I was panicking. Title taken from the excellent song of the same name by The National from their album Boxer; descriptions of the other postcard portraits are from Tom Phillips' exhibition/book, We Are The People (Castle Museum, York, 2005); telegram headers from an image search for "telegram 1904" that was more than unusually distracting. And, last but certainly not least - thanks to rho for a great prompt, and Connie Willis for canon.

"Ned," I said, adjusting the pink plastic cowboy hat as it slid backwards again. "Is this too much?"

I could see Ned in the mirror behind me, digging through a box that Wardrobe had repeatedly assured us would contain two size 37 spangly pink high-heeled shoes, plastic/glitter, Eng 2004. I could also hear the muffled series of exasperated noises that suggested otherwise. Almost everything had been raided by Retrievals, which had infiltrated the departments of Time Travel and History like a particularly successful fungus. I tried to think of a more favourable metaphor, given that I was joining them myself in a few weeks, but failed to improve on things with tentacles.

Ned straightened up to look. His face went through an interesting sequence of expressions.

"Perfect," he said.

I looked at his reflection sternly. The mirrored Ned was biting his lip, and the voice of the real one had a suspicious wobble in it.

"I was very supportive when you went through that paisley phase," I said. I jammed the hat down firmly and turned around. Ned was holding out one flimsy shoe in each hand, the thin straps looped neatly over his index fingers.

"I believe you mean my paper 'Mod to Hippy on Carnaby Street: male fashion in transition'," Ned corrected.

I took the shoes. "Yet another era characterised by unfortunate male facial hair," I said.

"I thought it was my moustache that originally attracted you to me," he said.

I'd put one hand on his shoulder to balance myself while I did up the second shoe and couldn't see his face. For a moment, though, I was back in Dunworthy's office, drenched through, convinced I'd single-handedly destroyed history, and then thrown completely off-balance by meeting a soot-smirched Peter Wimsey in an ARP uniform. Without a moustache, or I would never have made it out of the room, imminent destruction of the continuum or no.

The shoe strap vainly resisted my attempt to push it through the holder. I put my foot down and looked up at Ned. Everything else – the drop, the clothes, the takeover by Retrievals – became less important for a moment. A movie moment, or it would have been if the backing soundtrack been something hopeful with swelling strings, rather than the curtain rings rattling on the rail as Warder yanked the fabric back.

"Do you want this drop or not?" she said. "Badri's booked at three-thirty. The Retrievals staff are coming in to recalibrate at four." She divided her glare between both of us.

"Sorry," I said. I kissed Ned quickly, hitched up my tutu and tottered towards the net.

"Back soon," I said to Ned, edging into place on the X. Warder stabbed various buttons and the veils started to descend.

"I won't shave," Ned said solemnly, and I was gone. More precisely, I was here – in the time that matched the shoes, behind the ruins of St Mary's Abbey in the York museum gardens, my heels sinking into the wet grass.

* * *

_Dearest Mumsy,_

Your very favourite daughter misses the best of all Mamas so very much! Truly, it has been too long since we last saw you, and the photograph we keep on the mantel is no substitute for your own, dear, self! I only wish there were some way to "put a girdle round the Earth" as darling Shakespeare, although I would not wish to be over the briny deeps in one of those Continental Airships! Or, if Mr Bell's clever invention could be brought to speak across the Atlantic as well as across cities, at least we could hear your voice, and you in turn could hear the delightful prattle of the children, who talk often of their sweet Grandmama.

My dearest husband wishes you very well, also. I regret to say that no publisher is yet interested in his Book, which only serves to illustrate how short-sighted they are! I must confess, though, that I myself have trouble reading the work, but fortunately my darling explains it all to me in very simple language in the evenings once the children are tucked up in their cosy beds, and I listen attentively, although sometimes I find myself gazing at his dear, dear face and forgetting exactly which Greek man he is talking about.

For the present my darling is still with the Company, where he is most effective both on and off the stage, being as you well remember the very picture of efficiency! Alas, your daughter is too much of a scatterbrain to remember all those lines.

With all my most especial affection,

Your Toots  
  


* * *

Five hours later I was making my way through a snickelway, clinging to my new best friend and fourth primary source, Rachel. She'd stormed out of her own hen party after being told by her future sister-in-law to sit down and shut up, it wasn't all about her. She was thrilled to talk to someone who agreed that it should, indeed, have been her special night. The giddiness from the drop had worn off, but I'd had two vodka shots while talking to an earlier source, and the narrow brick walls loomed over us alarmingly.

" – last chance for it to be my time, right?" Rachel said. Her tiara slipped sideways as she shook her head in emphasis. "Then it's all over."

I murmured sympathetically, and steered us round the corner and on to the main street. Another hen party, all dressed in matching pink nuns' habits, were clustered on the corner. Rachel waved at them and hollered enthusiastically. I took the opportunity to check that the recorder inside my handbag was still functioning.

The nuns waved back. Two of them detached themselves and came over to talk, admiring my cowboy hat ("Practical,"), and making the appropriate noises of horror at Rachel's story. A passing car slowed down and hooted, and the nuns simultaneously gave the driver the finger.

"Men," the nun nearest me said. "You got a feller, then?"

The hen night, bachelorette party or kitchen tea, depending on the time and country, was a relatively short-lived cultural phenomenon, although female-specific wedding rituals went back far earlier. For the contemps of this period, such parties occupied an uncomfortable but interesting space between sexual freedom and conventional gender roles, and I had two-thirds of a paper written already before I'd finally managed, with back-up from Sociology and Women's Studies, to wangle a drop. Justifying field time for standard research had become almost impossible now with the expansion of Retrievals. Once I joined Ned there, though, at the end of the Trinity term, I'd be travelling much more often, although it was vanishingly unlikely that they'd send us out together.

"Yeah," I said to the pink nun.

"He all right?"

She had a holster belt with a pink water pistol clipped into it. I felt a twinge of professional jealousy. Wardrobe hadn't had any water pistols, pink or otherwise.

"Not bad," I said. "We've been together a while."

The nun snorted. "Stopped trying, has he?"

The other nun was telling Rachel about her mate Kirsty, the bride-to-be, who'd been texted by her fiancé halfway through the evening with the announcement that he thought they should see other people. Apparently she'd acted on this immediately by heading off with the party's stripper. I rubbed my arms against the cold and gave a half-hearted shrug, not all that keen to provide details of Ned's commitment at this time of night.

"In my experience – " the nun started, when Rachel's phone chirped.

Rachel hauled it out, checking the name before flipping it open.

"Trish." She sounded appropriately unimpressed. "Having a good time, then?" Her nun gave her a thumbs up.

"Yeah. No. Really?" She suddenly whooped with excitement. "Really? Serves her right. In the fountain? Did you get a photo? Right. Oscar's? See you." She shut the phone.

We looked at her expectantly.

"My future sister-in-law's been arrested for drunk and disorderly," she said. The nuns cheered. I expressed my approval of this female bonding, and took the opportunity to fake my own phone call. Apologising for leaving, I hugged everybody, gave Rachel a phone number that would never be answered and wished her all the best, hoping the alcoholism wasn't familial, before teetering north back to the drop.

I was twenty minutes early, which was good, and it started raining, which wasn't. Keeping one eye on the drop site, I drifted around the outside of the art gallery and thought wistfully about the woollen combinations of the Victorian era. Less practical than the tutu in an English summer, but on a raw night in April they seemed an excellent choice, shamefully rejected by the vagaries of fashion.

There was a display case on the outside wall of the gallery, with posters advertising coming exhibitions. One had a collection of portraits, black and white and sepia, the edges tattered and uneven in the reproductions. A man in a three-piece suit – Edwardian, rather than Victorian, I thought – and walrus moustache stood next to his prize-winning assortment of bottled fruit. A young woman tucked up sideways in an armchair read intently, blurred male figures talking in the room behind her. A small child stood braced against the waves in wet rompers, clutching her bucket.

My own face stared back at me from the bottom right image. I was wearing a long glittery costume and reclining on a chaise longue, drapery and columns in the background. The portrait had the same still solemn attentiveness of the other subjects, not yet used to being photographed: frozen in time for an unknown audience.

* * *

_Dearest Mumsy,_

A thousand kisses from each of the children, and another five thousand more from your most devoted of daughters! We have booked passage on the Carpathia, and should arrive in Liverpool on the 17th of June – a mere four weeks from today! O, it will be so good to be Home again (my darling husband will have his little joke and say that England is hardly Home to him, being Irish), and my only regret is that dear Papa is no longer there to meet us, although I am sure he is watching from a more Celestial realm, where no doubt he whiles away the hour admiring an assortment of heavenly fish!

I conveyed your very generous offer to my darling, and I am sure he will give it due thought. While I would never contradict my dear Mama, I feel that the Theatre is much more respectable nowadays, especially in America where people are less constrained by expectation, but perhaps you are right and we would be more settled at Muchings End. It is true that Clarence is a little wild, and might benefit from some English reserve – but we ought to save some conversation for our arrival, or else we will be staring at each other like so many statues!

Again, with my most sincere gratitude and affection,

Your Toots  
  


* * *

A straw poll of History's remaining staff when confronted with a blown-up reproduction of the photo (taken with my recorder before I ran for the net, holding my shoes in my hands) found that eight thought I'd had the photograph taken during the whole Coventry/Lady Schrapnell mess and forgotten it in a haze of time-lag (which I had to admit was not impossible), five thought it wasn't me ("Your mouth is more twisted. Yes, like that."), and two agreed that it was probably me, and that I didn't remember it, but that still wasn't going to get me a booking on the net, even if I did narrow down my destination to less than a forty year period.

The poster advertised an exhibition of postcard portraits, popular from the turn of the 20th century to the 1930s. I'd seen some, when I was preparing for my practicum – women posing stiltedly in their "best" clothes while I studied them for fashion advice – but never appeared in one, as far as I knew; department guidelines frowned on staff ending up in documentation. In the opening years of the twentieth century Britain had been dotted with studios and travelling postcard photographers, who would photograph village scenes – streets, people, fairs – and sell them to the locals, printed directly on card. If it wasn't that it might have been a cabinet card, popular in the late 1800s, or a carte de visite – even earlier – and without the original or a decent visual dating reference I just couldn't tell.

I'd badgered a member of Forensics until she'd promised to try and reconstruct the studio name from the few fragments of writing just visible above the torn-off bottom of the card, but she snorted with laughter when I asked for a time frame, and waved at an in-tray full of requests already labelled URGENT in bright red letters.

"Time and space are still intact," Dunworthy said, setting the reproduction back down on the desk between us. "So, at some stage, this photograph will be taken. Will have been taken." He rubbed his forehead. "Sometimes I think we should have gone ahead with that project with Linguistics on developing new tenses to discuss time-travel more accurately."

His office had been moved to an upstairs room in a distant corner of the college. It had a ridiculously low roof and a musty smell. Stacks of books and papers lined the corridor all the way to the far stairs. I'd wandered through them, thinking about the enormous glossy spaces of Retrievals, and the wide office with a river view that they'd shown me at my interview.

I looked at the photograph again. Surely I could have held up some sign while it was taken, or twisted my fingers to represent years, or – perhaps a tattoo…

"I know," I said. "It's – "

I couldn't think of the words. Maybe Dunworthy was right. Maybe we needed more than new tenses.

"I'll see what I can do," Dunworthy said. When I looked at him he clarified, "With the net."

"Thank you," I said, startled. "Really, you shouldn't – History has so few slots now – "

"We coped as a discipline for hundreds of years without time travel," Dunworthy said, uncapping his pen and making a note on his desk blotter. I took this as a dismissal and stood up, waiting for him to finish so I could thank him again. "It's useful, not essential." He pushed his glasses back up his nose, and nodded a goodbye.

 

Ned had no doubts about the photograph. Technically, though, he was now Retrievals, and practically he was extremely busy, co-ordinating the rival and conflicting demands of various teams, primarily split between those who wanted to save currently extinct species and those who wanted to retrieve historical artifacts. Bitter accusations between "bug-lovers" and "time-travellers with shopping lists" were frequently exchanged at meetings, and the rival factions ignored each other pointedly all over Oxford. After I found him sleeping on the couch for the third time that week rather than disturb me by coming late to bed I hadn't the heart to ask him about any additional drops.

Carruthers had been with Retrievals from the beginning. I caught up with him at the Jericho and traded scones for a promise that he'd take a copy of the portrait with him back on his next drop.

"The refreshment room, Reading Station, November 22nd, 1919," Carruthers said, rattling his spoon vigorously against his teacup. "Can't promise anything, but we get a fair amount of slippage round then; not as bad as during in the war, mind. Might have time to visit a few photography studios."

"Thank you."

He put his tea-cup back down. "Don't mention. Although I don't see why you don't do it yourself when you're finally on board."

I picked up a sugar lump from the bowl in front of us and lowered it into my tea on my own spoon, watching it slowly dissolve and lose coherence.

"My specialist area is the 1930s," I said. "I might as well explore other possibilities."

Carruthers came back with a bank messenger bag containing the first draft of T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and the information that the single studio he'd been able to visit had considered his sister's portrait (scuffed and tattered, to disguise its modern origins) very poor stuff, typical of the studios of ten or twenty years earlier. Warder informed me grudgingly that I was wait-listed for a drop to 1910, possibly in six months, maybe a year. Retrievals sent me an orientation pack, a list of pre-employment subliminals, and a projected work schedule that suggested that within six months I would have rebuilt two cathedrals and established breeding pairs of at least three extinct species. I submitted my hen party paper, hoping that a careless skim of my CV wouldn't see it as evidence of avian breeding skills, finished my marking, and began packing up my office.

I'd just found a whole collection of Tocelyn Mering's letters – put aside while Ned and I were on our honeymoon, and never picked up again – when someone knocked tentatively on the door frame. I looked up to see Badri, holding something that looked like a hat.

"Come in!" I said. I gathered the letters and dumped them in a teetering pile on the desk to create a seat.

Badri sat down, eyeing the pile cautiously. "Shame to see the place being cleared out."

"Retrievals is the way of the future," I said. "Or the past."

Badri grinned. "Dunworthy said you were trying to get to the early twentieth."

"I'm waitlisted. Realistically, though, I'll be retrieving by then, and I'm sure it will all be sorted out."

He shifted in his seat. "I'm finalising the net handover at the moment. Oscillator's been twitchy."

"Again," I said.

Badri nodded. "Once it's calibrated I have a drop booked. Ranniford agreed, finally, although I did have to bring in the union to talk very seriously about technician ongoing education and the benefits of having staff who are actually familiar with field work …"

The hat he was fiddling with was a Homburg, I realised. "To the early twentieth? Oh, but you'd be going to – Pakistan? No, wait, Partition was – "

"My family came over in the 1970s, actually," Badri said. "But I'm going to London. The East End, 1904. Enough Bangladeshi sailors there for me to blend in."

Along with an average life span of 30 years and living conditions that were the shame of Europe. The flip side of the elegant lifestyle I'd experienced twenty years earlier, created by the push towards industrialisation. Not my first choice for an excursion. "The East End?" I said.

Badri leaned forward in his chair, the hat bending in his hands. "It's the theatre I'm going for," he said, sounding more enthusiastic than I'd ever heard him. "Granville Barker at the Royal Court, Ibsen challenging all the ideals of the age, William Butler Yeats, Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw… and all the melodramas too, like East Lynne – Dead! And never called me mother! – and music hall, the Empire, the Palace, all the performances – you can't record those, it's not the same…"

I was still blinking at his version of the quote, which he'd given in falsetto.

"You like theatre," I said blankly.

"I did try to get a grant," he said, sounding defensive. "For the last five years. But I'm not really a researcher."

"It sounds wonderful," I said, and meant it. "I do hope you enjoy it. Oh, and I know I've pressed this on everyone, but if you do have a spare moment on the drop – " I looked around for a copy of the photograph, feeling like a member of a peculiarly specific religious cult.

"They booked time for two researchers," Badri said. "Some confusion in the system, Dunworthy said, and it's too late to prep anyone now. Do you want to come?"

I stopped searching and stared at him. He looked amused. He looked even more so when the pile of Tossie's letters, disturbed by my searching, slipped off the desk in a slow and unstoppable avalanche.

* * *

_POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS  
If the Bearer of an Inbound Telegram doubts its accuracy, he may have it repeated on payment of half the amount originally paid for its transmission, and if it is found that there was any inaccuracy, the amount paid for repetition will be refunded. Special conditions are applicable to the repetition of Foreign Telegrams._

To: Mrs Malvinia Mering  
Muchings End

Am staying in London until I find him. Lodging at Brown's. All my love to the children and do keep Clarence away from the armoury.

Toots

* * *

Over the week of the drop I met Badri at the British Museum each day to catch up. By Friday we'd worked our way through the Egyptian Antiquities, and were now into the Assyrian. On the panel in front of me the Elamites were being soundly and variously defeated. I sympathised.

"Any luck?" Badri asked.

Forensics – after a great deal of wheedling – had given me an eighty percent probability of an E3 postcode, so I'd spent the whole week of the drop visiting every photographic studio in Bow, as well as inspecting every item of furniture they had that remotely resembled a chaise-longue and exhibiting feminine indecision over the choice of backdrops. I'd looked at clothing both there and in the shops, and all of it had been completely fruitless.

"No," I said. The Elamites were getting pushed into the river while an Assyrian in a chariot went charging back, holding the head of the enemy king up by the hair. At least they'd known where they were going, and a head was far more definitive than a photograph.

"Sorry," Badri said. We moved on to the Garden Party relief, where Assurbanipal reclined on something that still wasn't the right chaise-longue and sipped wine, accompanied by a small carved orchestra.

Pick-up was this evening, outside St Paul's. I could go back and have a weekend with Ned – assuming no last minute emergencies on his part – and then start with Retrievals, and no doubt on my first trip someone would usher me into a studio and all my worrying would be over.

"It was a long shot," I said. "Thanks, anyway."

Badri nodded. We stared at the Assyrian king as he shot lions.

I'd planned to spend the hours before pick-up trudging the pavements again, but suddenly it all seemed pointless.

"Could you recommend a show for this afternoon?" I asked. "Something undemanding. No singing."

The matinee was crowded but cheerful. I found my seat in the circle and settled in, armed with a programme. The lights had just gone down when a woman coming in late pushed her way along the row in front of me, apologising in a way that suggested those trodden on should be grateful for supporting her. All I could make out in the darkness was the outline of a truly impressive hat, which accounted for the comment in the programme asking Ladies to Please Remove Headgear Prior to the Performance. I had. This lady didn't.

The first piece was a comedy duo, entertaining enough, and then a drawing-room sketch in which a respectable family turned out to be not quite so respectable. Their butler, however, who was a relative bastion of propriety, looked oddly familiar, and I was just wondering if the job itself involved some sort of stamping or imprinting process when the woman in the hat stood up and shouted, "William!" at the top of her lungs.

The butler dropped his tray and looked up, and with the light full on him I could tell. Baine. William Patrick Callahan, sixteen years older – his hair thinning on top and his face a little more worn, but perfectly recognisable. Which meant – I twisted around to look at the woman in the hat, but she was already halfway out of the row. The ushers were approaching. I hurled myself out of my seat after her, apologising frantically to the disturbed audience ("Oh, don't mind us. Just trying to see a show, weren't we.") and caught up with Tossie – no, she'd changed her name – Tolly? Tottie? – as she was struggling with the ushers.

"Come along, ma'am," one of them was saying.

"That is my husband," Tossie said, furiously, flinging her head back, and it was definitely she. Her hat looked like a wedding cake made from feathers, and her theatre coat had at least four contrasting layers of ruffled sleeves.

"They all say that," the usher said, shepherding her away. There was a shocked gasp from beneath the wedding cake.

"Are you with this lady?"

I turned to find another usher standing at my elbow. The audience was muttering unhappily at the disturbance, while below on stage the actors had been replaced by a small child with a violin.

"Why, yes," I said, not wanting to be sent back. The music My upper arm was grasped firmly and I was escorted out of the theatre proper, down the stairs and out a side entrance, ending up on the pavement and admid of a growing crowd attracted by Tossie insisting they let her back inside, and hammering on the firmly closed door.

According to the diaries Tossie had definitely gone to America, with Baine – William – and, from what I could recall, stayed there in domestic bliss. Possibly I should have expected that this was their version of it, although Tossie, who was now running out of steam and starting to sob, looked genuinely upset.

Which was nothing to how she would feel when her long-lost cousin materialised behind her, significantly less aged than expected. Tossie slumped against the door with a last wail, and then turned around.

I managed to get my handkerchief out and up against my face, holding it to my cheek and hding, I hoped, enough of my features to serve as a disguise. At least I'd managed to bring my hat. It was modest enough, but it covered most of my hair.

"I have to get in," Tossie said. "Please, are you with the theatre?" She sniffed and looked up at me beseechingly.

There were a few white hairs in with the gold curls, and the dress under the theatre coat was a lot tighter than the ones she'd worn when I'd known her before, but the essentials hadn't changed.

I coughed. "I'm – " I tried to lower my voice. "Not exactly."

Tossie's – what did she change her name to? Not that I should know it yet, anyway – eyes narrowed, and she withdrew a little. "Are you quite well?"

"Toothache," I said through the handkerchief.

Tossie looked unimpressed. I didn't remember her as the sort to enjoy mopping fevered brows. I needed something else.

"This cold goes right through me," I remarked, shivering slightly in the warm June air. "If it's not too much of an inconvenience, perhaps you could help me find somewhere to sit down inside – " I emphasised the last word. "Or even loan me your coat, which is very distinctive…"

Tossie's wits had obviously sharpened over the years. She shrugged off her coat and we began moving through the crowd, back towards the front of the theatre.

"Casting a sick woman out on the street," she said, and held out the coat. I hugged it to my chest, still clutching my handkerchief, and nodded pointedly at the wedding cake. Tossie reluctantly handed it over. I doubled it in half and shoved the whole lot inside my own coat, essaying a low groan.

"They wouldn't do that where I come from," Tossie said, her accent now distinctively more Trans-Atlantic, and we swept through the doors, hopefully less recognisable. Fast talking (Tossie) and moaning (me) eventually got us through another side door, and by proceeding in exactly the opposite direction from that instructed, down a long narrow corridor stacked with flats, racks of costumes, coiled ropes and, optimistically, large buckets labelled "Fire". Tossie froze outside a particular door, listening with all the intentness of a gundog, and then flung it open.

Baine had removed his butler's jacket and was standing there in his shirt-sleeves, talking with an older man. It looked more like a rehearsal space than a changing room, with a few flats set up, lights, and a scattering of furniture-shaped objects under dust sheets.

The door hit the wall with a bang. Both men jumped.

Tossie advanced into the room. "How could you – " she began.

Baine held up his hands. Surprisingly, it worked. "The theatre's not a suitable life for the children," he said. "Nor for you. You've done valiantly, I have nothing but admiration for you, but when I saw you back at Muchings End, in your rightful setting – " he broke off. "Didn't you read my letter?" he said, sounding more like someone who'd been married to Tossie for sixteen years. "I explained it all there. I'll come back once I'm more financially established."

I couldn't see Tossie's face from where I was standing, and I didn't want to move further into the light in case Baine saw me. Tossie's back wasn't telling me anything.

"I have your best interests at heart," Baine said, and drew himself up, proper and correct.

Tossie whirled around, lunged past me and before I had a chance to react grabbed one of the buckets, staggered back again and tossed the contents – a sizeable quantity of water – over Baine with an impressive splash.

She dropped the empty bucket. It rolled away, clanking, and when it stopped the only noise was the dripping of water.

"I like being with the company, even if I'm no good at it," Tossie said. "I even like you. I suppose that's not in my best interests, either."

Baine wiped water from his eyes. The other man, who hadn't entirely escaped the deluge, looked as if he wanted the floor to swallow him up. Tossie stalked out of the room.

She got three steps down the corridor before Baine ran after her, squelching, and began talking to her in a low voice.

I ducked into the room and shut the door behind me, hoping to avoid any revelations of my identity or their feelings. The older man eyed me nervously. I realised I was still clutching a handkerchief to my face with one hand and an unidentifiable lump of clothing to my waist with the other. I dropped the handkerchief.

"Do you work with the company, Mr – " I said brightly. I put down the clothing and pulled off the nearest dust sheet, holding it out to him.

"Collier, madam," the man said. He took the dust sheet and mopped at his face. "Not the theatre, no. Mr Callahan is arranging portraits of the company for distribution to the public."

I looked down at the item of furniture I'd just uncovered. A chaise longue, high back, rolled legs, light-coloured fabric… And the flat set up behind it had two columns, just like the ones I'd seen before, and the object next to Mr Collier had three thin metal legs and a black fabric cover.

"O, I'm so glad to meet you," I said, borrowing from Tossie and clasping my hands together in girlish excitement. " Mr Callahan said I could go first, as unfortunately I have to go on tour shortly. Imminently."

"I don't recall – " Mr Collier said. I steamrollered through.

"So kind of you. I'll just pop out for a moment while you fix the lights."

I found the right dress on the second rack, and wriggled into it behind the shelter of a painted storm scene. Baine and Tossie had moved further away down the corridor, but from what I could see they were definitely closer to a rapprochement. I went back in and sat on the chaise-longue.

"Is this all right?" I said.

Mr Collier had his head under the drop cloth. "One moment, madam."

I stared at the brass lens and thought about performances, and acting.

"Doing this as a special favour," Mr Collier said, amid clicking noises. "Can't abide the theatre myself. Too much talking. Those new motion pictures, that's what you want. Music, maybe, but no sound. Restful."

"And they're the same each time," I said.

Mr Collier snorted. "Reliability," he said. "That's the key. Now, then – ready?"

* * *

_POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS  
If the Bearer of an Inbound Telegram doubts its accuracy, he may have it repeated on payment of half the amount originally paid for its transmission, and if it is found that there was any inaccuracy, the amount paid for repetition will be refunded. Special conditions are applicable to the repetition of Foreign Telegrams._

To: Mrs Malvinia Mering  
Muchings End

Will meet you and the children in Liverpool for the return sailing. My darling husband has exciting news of a new career opportunity back in America, which I'm sure will be successful and we will be able to reimburse you for all of the damages.

Toots

* * *

"Would you mind very much," I said, putting yet another stack of Tossie's letters into a file box. "If I didn't take the Retrievals job?"

Ned didn't say anything. I took a deep breath and looked up from the box to where he was sorting through old subliminal tapes.

"I'd be bereft," he said, finally. "But only on a professional basis. Would our loss be History's gain?"

I let the air out, relieved. "I talked to Dunworthy today," I said. "In five years' time they should have another net up and running. In the mean time, well, there are plenty of undergraduates to educate. And it's not as if we have a shortage of research material."

Ned fiddled with a couple of the tapes, aligning the edges neatly. "It is professional, isn't it?"

"It's not that I don't want to work with you," I said, horrified, and saw his shoulders relax. "It's – oh, what I find most fascinating about the past is the people. Like Badri, wanting to go to plays, because they only exist while they're being performed."

"Or as scripts."

"Like films," I said. "Or reconstructions. But the audience is different each time."

Ned lined up another tape. He'd put his head down again, and I couldn't see his face.

"I loved looking for the bishop's bird stump," I said. "With you. Charging all over time for the sake of it, without a chance to think about it or interpret it, or gain any sense of perspective – "

"You want to be an audience."

"I don't know," I said. "An audience, a witness, a critic…" I gestured helplessly.

Ned looked up. He was smiling. Even without a moustache he looked perfect.

"The word you're looking for," he said, reaching across the desk towards me, "is historian."

 

THE END


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